


Rivalry in Guilt of Every Kind

by svegliatevi



Category: Dune - All Media Types, Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25700365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svegliatevi/pseuds/svegliatevi
Summary: Without the faintest hint of inflection, his voice cold and flat as a sheet of ice, Piter asked: "Do you insist on instigating a fight you cannot win?"
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	Rivalry in Guilt of Every Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Rabban and Piter contemplate a captive Salusan bull. Piter reveals a hint of his murderous yearning for the Duke, if only for a moment.

Giedi Prime was no different than it always had been. Though it had changed since Rabban’s youth, its essence was the same: one of rot and blood and industry. 

It was not Rabban’s home, but it was more familiar to him than Lankiveil, his birthplace and the seat of his title as a Count. Lankiveil and its obligations had become an unpleasant fog clouding his mind, where Giedi Prime was still capable of provoking his limited capacity for nostalgia. No matter how its finery and trappings changed with the season, the architecture of the Harkonnen Keep remained the same. Rabban could navigate its halls without thinking. 

And yet — he always dreaded returning.

Returning to Giedi Prime meant submitting to the Baron’s scrutiny and disdain. It meant seeing the spoiled brat being raised to succeed in Rabban’s place. For as much as Arrakis hated its “demon ruler,” as he was called, Rabban at times imagined that he felt more potent resentment emanating from Giedi Prime.

But Giedi Prime afforded him certain luxuries, to be sure. When he returned, he was free to indulge in the diversions he had always enjoyed most, chief among them the abuse of slaves and the arrangement of bloodsports. The Baron kept the gladiatorial arena’s underbelly open to him, a small concession — for Rabban had long since proven that he could manage its intricacies perhaps better than he managed anything else.

The air beneath the arena was stagnant and thick. It smelled of sweat and blood, gladiators and beasts. As he entered, Rabban drew a deep breath and savored it.

He strode through the underground for some time, watching men cower in their cages and beasts pacing in their pens. He stopped at the largest cage, containing a new specimen: an immense Salusan bull. For a time, he merely observed it, noting its sharpened horns and the muscles that rippled hatefully beneath its auburn-tinted hide. It grew apprehensive under his scrutiny, but Rabban did not fear its rancor; a subtle shield was activated at all times around the viewing wall of its enclosure.

A day hence, the bull would become the focal point of the arena: gladiator-slaves dressed in Harkonnen cobalt would attempt to overwhelm it, armed with spears and sabers. If every man among them failed, a true Harkonnen soldier tasked with arbitrating the match was to shoot the bull dead, granting it mercy in obliteration.

House Harkonnen had long favored Salusan bulls in its gladiatorial games — for it was that same creature that had killed the Duke Leto’s father, in a turn of delicious irony: undone by his own precious corrida.

The straw littering the animal’s reinforced pen was rank. The very air near the bull was warm and moist, befouled by its hateful vigor. Rabban breathed deeply again, inhaling that embodiment of anger, feeling cleansed by it.

A trace of cinnamon odor lingered nearby. 

Rabban cleared his throat. “Lurking in the shadows as usual, Piter?”

Harkonnen’s Mentat strode out from a dark stone corridor beyond the bull’s cage. Unfazed, he replied, “'Tis a specialty of mine, yes.” Dryly, he continued, “I was here long before you arrived.” 

Without so much as a glance toward Rabban, Piter crossed the small corridor to the very edge of the bull’s pen, halting only inches from the barred cage that contained every ounce of its strength and hatred. The animal noticed him, tossing its head and snorting, but did not appear to grow further agitated by his close proximity. 

Rabban took a step forward, not wishing to appear too wary of the beast — or of Piter. 

It had been some time since last they had spoken in person, and Rabban could not help but notice that Piter looked older. Though the geriatric effects of the spice had kept Piter looking younger than his years for more than a decade, he was beginning to look ragged at last. 

He was not nearly as decrepit as the ancient Thufir Hawat, but none would mistake Piter for a young man. His jet-black hair was not yet struck through with silver, but his eyes were heavy with the weight of late nights and endless labor. Thin lines creased from the corners of his lips. His cheeks and temples were more gaunt and sunken than ever. Though he had always been a lean and hungry-looking fellow, he appeared to have lost weight and muscle of late. With his blue-in-blue eyes like empty sockets, Piter looked like some horrid ghoul come to life.

Rabban had never liked him. Piter was a fascinating tool, but he was disagreeable and arrogant; neither pleasant to speak to or pleasant to look at, as far as Rabban was concerned. Rabban found his voice and mannerisms irritating, and he knew that the disdain he felt was mutual. 

But after the passage of nearly twenty years, Piter, too, had become familiar.

Scuffing the sole of his boot against the dirt-streaked stone floor, Rabban ventured, "The Baron took his time replying to my message."

Ordinarily, he did not dare to speak of Harkonnen in such a way, let alone in the presence of the old monster's Mentat — but he felt he was afforded some room to maneuver, just the once. Beneath the arena, he felt his authority still held meaning.

"Difficult as you may find this to believe, Count Rabban," Piter began, turning halfway from the cage, "there exist matters more pressing than your various complaints, and we are forced to attend to them with all due haste." 

"I already know that haste is not my due," Rabban snapped.

“I am not the Baron’s errand-boy, whatever you may think.” Though Piter maintained his eerie stillness, the cadence of his voice evoked the impression of a fencer leaping to riposte. “Address your concerns with him directly, if you would.”

“If he were amenable to it, I might.” Rabban folded his arms over his chest, feeling his muscles straining with tension. “The moment I speak of those desert savages, he scoffs and dismisses me as if I'm a misbehaving cur.”

Piter glanced sidelong at him as if to ask, _Aren’t you_? "Again, you complain of these scum? Have you not been provided with resources enough to eradicate the problem?"

“No,” Rabban insisted. “That’s the root of the issue. There are far more fighting-fit in their ranks than you estimated. Even the children know how to take a life. One of their shriveled elders could kill you in the blink of an eye." 

When Piter twisted his features into an exaggerated expression of doubt, Rabban continued: "I said _you_ , and it was you that I meant. Don't think you could fool them with those eyes of yours. They hate Harkonnens. They would sniff you out." 

Though Piter was not Harkonnen by blood, he had been a Harkonnen for years. He was inextricable from the House. It was he who had engineered much of the suffering in the Baron’s fiefs, though Rabban had enacted it in his own way where his rule was permitted. 

It was Piter who had become the puppet master, dangling strings from his fingers that danced across worlds.

In a bright, cheerful voice, Piter said: "I do dislike these chats we have! Interacting with you, Rabban, displeases me." He turned fully, his back to the bull’s cage, and displayed a saccharine smile that did not meet his eyes in the least. “Have I not established this before?”

"You think I like it any more than you?" Rabban snorted. "I don’t seek you out by choice. In any case, it doesn't matter what you like."

"Oh, what Piter likes has rarely mattered." Piter maintained the same cheerful tone, but bitterness lingered in the lowest register of his voice, a frigid baritone creeping up through his customary tenor.

With a scoff, Rabban paced closer. "Hasn't it? My uncle has spoiled you rotten for decades. And you are rotten as they come, Piter."

Piter laughed. "He has afforded me certain allowances, yes. I have expensive tastes, and this House is more than capable of meeting such expenses. However—"

The corded muscles in Rabban’s forearms twitched. Not for the first time, he longed for the authority to put Piter in his place with a single well-struck blow — but even Rabban understood that such a thing could not come to pass. 

"If you never wanted to be our Mentat in the first place, very well. It wasn't your choice to make.” Baring his teeth, Rabban snarled, “But don't come crying to me about it after twenty years."

Piter’s mouth snapped open to launch some wicked retort, but Rabban would not allow him the satisfaction of the last word.

"No other House would let you run amok like we do. A man like Corrino would have you on a chokechain. You’d be no more than a clerk to half the idiots in the Landsraad. And I'm sure you don't wish to be the Duke's pet, though I hear how you _covet_ his pain—"

Piter could no longer veil his indignation. "If you could forego being vulgar for but a few moments of your day—"

"As if you aren't?" Rabban's voice echoed in the stone chamber, harsh and dire.

Piter's tone dropped several pitches, losing any pretension toward humor. Without the faintest hint of inflection, his voice cold and flat as a sheet of ice, Piter asked, "Do you insist on instigating a fight you cannot win?"

There had once been a time when Rabban felt assured he could have bested Piter in a duel. That time had long since passed.

Since then, he had seen Piter kill by his own hand. He had seen but a fraction of what Piter was physically capable of, and he understood that Piter was perilously quick and punishingly enduring. Even haggard as he seemed of late, descending from his former peak of fitness, it was a certainty that a man like Piter could withstand a mortal blow long enough to land one of his own. He was the type to pursue survival purely out of spite.

For several moments, Rabban did not answer. Piter stared at him with those eyes, void-black in the darkness of the underground corridor, and Rabban stared back, though Piter’s gaze filled him with an unnamed dread.

At Piter’s back, the bull snorted and lowed, its goring horns poised behind him. Rabban could see the force of the animal’s breath rippling the fabric of Piter’s cape; surely he felt the blast of hot, furious air, and still he was disinclined to move at all. Statuesque and silent, with the bull scraping the ground behind him like a minion of his own, Piter continued to stare, never blinking.

"He was right," Rabban said, certain that Piter would know of whom he spoke. "You truly are coming unhinged."

Those twenty years, Rabban supposed, had taken their toll. He found himself surprised that even Piter could endure so long. The Baron was not an easy man to work for. Despite all the privilege he afforded Piter, allowing Piter far more than his share of dignity and pride and arrogance, he offered no shortage of threats and cutting remarks as a supplement. Most of these, Piter seemed well-equipped to ignore, but there was one thing that kept him in check: the knowledge that, without any effort, Harkonnen could unmake him. 

He could simply deny him the dosage of spice he now needed to live, leaving him a ruined husk of his former self, letting his mind shrivel and weaken as death claimed him day by day. Any Mentat would welcome death rather than suffer such a fate, and Piter was no different. 

Though Piter had devoted his life to inspiring terror, he, too, had fears of his own. Fears and desires: prideful creature that he was, he feared debasement more than he feared death, but he craved the suffering of others.

Perhaps it was the promise of blood that fueled him now. Like a predator, Piter could smell fresh blood beading, and it was driving him closer and closer to a frenzy. Someone was meant to die, and Piter was losing his patience, too eager to revel in that death.

Was it Atreides blood that moved him so?

Or Harkonnen?

"I will warn you only once," Piter said, his voice brittle with the effort of remaining level and quiet. "Piter is not a toy."

It had taken only three words to vex him so: _He was right._

Harkonnen spoke ill of Piter often enough, but this was different. The very implication was anathema to Piter: the Baron had undermined his vaunted mental prowess to Rabban of all people, the nephew he had long since deemed an idiot, a muscle-minded tank-brain, a lost cause. 

"I know," Rabban admitted. He suppressed a smug smile. "You're a weapon."

It was true, he understood. Piter was not a plaything. He was not even a madman — he was in careful control of every faculty he possessed. He was a sharper blade than most.

A grin flashed across Piter’s face. “So you have learned one thing, in all these years.”

Behind him, the bull staggered, bowing its head. Its massive horns swayed slowly back and forth as it lowered its body, folding its legs beneath itself in the moldering straw that covered the enclosure. 

Rabban drew nearer to observe; he had rarely seen beasts of its ilk tire in such a way. It looked up at Piter, and its black eyes appeared dim and unfocused.

“You poisoned it?”

“Of course.” Piter’s smile softened. He turned to the bull, lowering himself onto one knee in a fluid movement of genuflection. “I was given leave to do so. I have made great advancements indeed with this formula.”

Rabban took a step backward — whether from the bull or from Piter, he did not know.

Piter's cape pooled on the ground behind him like tar, the same blue-black color as his eyes. His long, cruel fingers curled around the bars of the cage — then slipped through them. 

The shield had never been active.

Slowly, Piter extended his hand forward, cupping the bull’s snout in his palm. Its head lolled, nostrils flaring with each shallow breath, but it did not lash out or turn away. It lacked the strength or the willpower.

“Miserable wretch,” Piter cooed, stroking his thumb over the bull’s nose. Though his was a light touch, there was no tenderness or gentleness in it. There was no pity or fondness. “This creature was purchased to do only two things,” he said. “To kill, and to die.”

Rabban took his meaning. Piter and the bull were not so different. They both longed to sink a sharpened part of themselves into a man's guts and twist. To Piter, a blade was like an extension of his arm; any knife he touched, he wielded as naturally and deftly as he did his own body, as a bull wielded its horns.

It was said that the head of the bull that killed the Old Duke still hung in the Atreides hall, still stained with Atreides blood — but it could not have been Piter’s intent to become such a trophy.

Piter withdrew his hand from the enclosure. The bull slumped forward, still attentive to the best of its ability, watching as Piter drew himself up to his full height. 

Rabban leaned back against the corridor’s cold stone wall, feigning an air of ease. “Well,” he said, drawing the single syllable out into an aggravated sigh. “Its time will come tomorrow night. I would hope it’ll provide some entertainment, despite whatever you’ve done to it.”

Piter smiled without mirth. “Oh, I think it shall be very entertaining.”

“As to that, what did you do to it?”

“Was it not obvious?” A trace of humor glittered in Piter’s unreadable eyes. Ordinarily, he took any opportunity to gloat about his poisons. He always found amusement in making himself irritating.

“Don’t play dumb, Mentat.”

“Ask a pointless question, get a pointless answer.” Piter folded his hands behind his back. “As you've managed to divine, it's been poisoned. You’d find the chemical particulars dreadfully boring, but I assure you, the creature isn’t hobbled; by morning, it will be more vigorous and vicious than ever. It will struggle.”

He took two steps forward and paused, still and silent. For a moment, Rabban thought he would glance back at the bull — but he did not.

“You misunderstood,” Piter said. “I do not see myself in this animal.”

Rabban glanced at the cage, wondering how his thoughts had been so plain when Piter had not even been looking at him. Too many years had passed between them, he supposed; as a Mentat, Piter had come to anticipate the way he reasoned. 

The Salusan bull’s eyes still lingered on Piter’s back.

In one swift movement, Piter pivoted to face Rabban. “I see the Duke, overrun by beasts in Harkonnen livery.”

It was Leto’s face Piter had thought to caress, Leto’s eyes he had gazed into with such pure, tranquil contempt.

“That does sound entertaining,” Rabban said, and he could not help but smile at the farce. It was cruel. It was clever. It was Piter, through and through.

“Do you understand now?” Piter asked. The smile that played across his lips, for the first time, was full of a strange, toxic warmth. It was not meant for Rabban.

Rabban understood.

It had always been about Leto.


End file.
